'The Night of the 12th' Is Brutal, Effective True Crime Without the Exploitation

By Petr Navovy | Film | January 8, 2024 |

By Petr Navovy | Film | January 8, 2024 |

Debuting at the 2022 edition of the Cannes Film Festival and releasing in France in the summer of 2022, true crime drama The Night of the 12th (La Nuit du 12) didn’t land in American cinemas until its limited theatrical run in late May of this year. As such, it’s likely that this film, directed by Dominik Moll (Harry, He’s Here to Help) and co-written by Moll and Gilles Marchand (also Harry, He’s Here to Help), will have flown under some people’s radar.

That was certainly the case for me. Despite enjoying Moll’s previous feature (2019’s Only the Animals (Seules les bêtes)) well enough, I was completely unaware of The Night of the 12th’s existence until it appeared on a friend’s best-of roundup for last year. Winner of six Cesar awards—including Best Director and Most Promising Actor—The Night of the 12th certainly made a big splash in France, and it would be a mistake for fans of true crime, and cinema in general, to miss out on.

Based on the 2020 non-fiction book ‘18.3. Une année à la PJ’ by Pauline Guéna, in which the author spent a year with the French serious crime division, the Police Judiciaire, The Night of the 12th opens with on-screen white-on-black text that tells us that a significant percentage of serious crimes in France go unsolved, and that we’re about to see the story of one of those: The horrific 2016 murder of a twenty-one-year-old woman (Clara Royer, played by Lula Cotton-Frapier). I didn’t know any of this going in to the film. To be quite honest, if I had, I might’ve hesitated watching, as the borderline exploitative and unethical nature of so much true crime these days leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It can be exhausting (and a little bit perverse) to see yet another story that revolves around a woman being brutalised or murdered. Especially when that violence is filmed in a way that hints at a degree of relish. It’s not a black and white issue, but it’s important to note what it says about a society when so much of its fiction treats this issue in such a way. There’s a reason why ‘fridging’, ostensibly a gender neutral trope, is one that has become so strongly associated with only one gender after all. Fortunately, The Night of the 12th largely manages to avoid the pitfalls of so much true crime—especially true crime centred around crimes against women. Treating the subject with the gravity that it deserves, it is an unsparing yet un-exploitative look at the rotten fabric of our society.

The Cesar-winning Bastien Bouillon stars as lead detective Yohan Vivès, who takes his unit into the small Alpine town outside of Grenoble where the disturbing crime that kicks off the film takes place. Bouillon deserves his award. It’s a role the type of which we have seen many times before—the austere professional dedicated to his job—but here, devoid of genre flash or the lightening touch of any humor, it is more difficult than usually. Bouillon knocks it out of the park, subtly showing us how this case gradually frays this man’s nerves to pieces. While all the individual characters here are written and performed well—especially Bouli Lanners as Yohan’s more experienced yet more sensitive partner Marceau—the film’s main thesis is one that says that fundamentally individuals are irrelevant. As we dive deeper into the community in which Clara was murdered, and as Yohan’s case bumps up against dead end after dead end, The Night of the 12th gradually draws up a convincing argument that every man—whether civilian or cop—is just as guilty of the crime as every other.

Struggling to put his feelings into words for most of the film, at one point Yohan, despairing, tells a female judge who has joined the case, ‘Something is amiss between men and women.’ Brutal, effective simplicity that mirrors the gut-churning nature of Moll’s film. This is a significant step up from Only the Animals, which was well made but slight. Comparisons to masterpieces Zodiac and Memories of Murder are not made lightly, but—while not quite on the same level—The Night of the 12th earns them. The procedural elements are constructed effectively with cinematographer Patrick Ghiringhelli behind the camera and Laurent Rouan in the editing room, but it’s in the slow, careful examination of the influence of millions of moving cogs within a rotten system, and of the cumulative nature of countless mini-decisions and subconscious prejudices, that the film’s true power comes from. There are a few lines and motifs that are a tad on the nose, but by and large this is a smart, excellent film.